Jamie A. Thomas
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#languagestory blog

Video & perspectives on communication, intercultural learning & the impact of anthropological research.

Talking With My Hands in Manchester Airport

10/19/2017

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Speaking Without Vocalizing...Where to go?

Just two days ago, I was on my way home after spending an exhilarating long weekend in London and Amsterdam with researchers of language, linguistics, and culture (at Baraza at SOAS), when I found myself totally turned around in Manchester Airport. Which way to go after passport control? To transfer to another flight? The signage was confusing.

Ordinarily, I would've felt pretty lame about it, but then I also noticed another person angling back and forth between the signs/words printed on doors 1 and 2, with a look of confusion similar to my own. I turned to ask him where if he was on the same flight as me. When he didn't vocalize in reply, but instead used a variety of Sign Language, and gestured to show me a message he'd typed in English into the Notes feature on his iPhone,  I realized that not only was he from my same flight, but that he was also Deaf.

It also dawned on me that this same guy had earlier just been at the Passport Control desk adjacent to me in line, when we had thanked the UK Border Force officer with by gesturing his hand away from in mouth in a sign I recognized as "thank you." Now that we both stood in the airport between doors 1 and 2, the task became about how we would both get to our next flight, as both of us were heading stateside. My new friend tapped his wrist, as if pointing to the time, and indicated that we had only a short while before our next flight. Uh oh. With only limited time, how would we communicate to solve our problem?


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Close Encounters of the Skull Kind: An Ode to Public History

3/18/2016

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By Jamie A. Thomas
Human skull from the Samuel G. Morton Collection at the Penn Museum.
"Egyptian blended with the Negro form." Human skull from the Samuel G. Morton Collection at the Penn Museum.

Yo, What's With the Skulls?

For my seminar this week, I arranged a visit to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. We've been engaging with 19th century discourses of humanity, difference, and the body, and I wanted us to get out of the classroom to interact with materials from that time period. We were lucky enough to get up close and personal with human remains amassed (problematically) by Philadelphia physician Samuel G. Morton in the mid-1800s. These labelled skulls are now part of the eponymous collection researched and conserved by the Penn Museum. 

All semester long in my seminar, Languages of Fear, Racism, and Zombies, I've been guiding students through perspectives in critical discourse analysis and a range of discursive representations of humanity and the Other. We began with the Wild Man of the European Renaissance and traced the genealogy of this idea to the contemporary framing of Bear Grylls and his Man vs. Wild television series. Next, we began to explore Darwinian paradigm as it relates to our radicalized, gendered, and classist ideas of civilization, competition, and primitivism. We discussed the life and times of Nathaniel  Isaacs, Saartje Baartman, the implications of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and the Haitian and African origins of the zombie. Our next moves will be to examine the notion of the zombie in the context of Henrietta Lacks' immortal (and undead) cells, and the language and visual discourse of Romero's Night of the Living Dead.  

The way I see it, there's no studying the zombie without equally examining (1) what we think makes us human and (2) our fears of death, dying, and reanimation. What better way to enhance our study than to interact with a massive collection of human skulls? Admittedly, it was a bit creepy to be in a room surrounded by the ossified remains of hundreds of people I could never know. But, we were oriented by our immensely knowledgable guide, Penn Museum specialist, Paul Mitchell...  ​

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Film Leaves Us Wanting More Flesh

3/4/2016

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by Eojin (Jin) Choi, Shuang Guan, & Tiauna Lewis

Jin, Shuang, and Tiauna's movie review is a response to a field trip to see the new movie, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016), as part of our Spring 2016 seminar, Languages of Fear, Racism, and Zombies at Swarthmore College. **SPOILER ALERT**
The Bennett sisters put their sword skills to work.
The Bennett sisters work their way through the party in full style.
Following the trend of mash-ups between history, literature, and the supernatural, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies takes the British classic by Jane Austen and adds in a zombie-fighting quest. The love story between Jane and Mr. Bingley, and between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, unfolds against a backdrop of a zombie outbreak that is rapidly taking over England. In the end, Darcy and Elizabeth overcome their initial impressions of each other and work together to minimize the spread of the outbreak.

In the movie, viewers see hundreds of zombies that constantly hunt for brains while being hunted down themselves. Historically, this stems from the Haitian belief, in which zombies came in multiple forms: They were spirits stolen by magicians, humans who willingly became zombies, or mindless servants of their zombie creator. In American society, however, the historical appeal of the zombie initially came largely from the creature's lack of autonomy. Many even considered zombies to be the ideal slaves, since they could work for long hours and survive on minimal amounts of food. This characterization of the zombie as a mindless corpse is what the American public is most familiar with today.

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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Part 1

2/20/2016

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By Jamie A. Thomas
Chalkboard from my seminar course on February 17, 2016.
Brainstorming in my seminar course, *Languages of Fear, Racism, and Zombies* (Spring 2016) on February 17.
"There was, however, a savage wildness that could only impress us with forebodings respecting Mr. Farewell and his party, of whom we were in search, which led us to apprehend that they had all fallen by the savage hands of the tribes who might occasionally visit the coast." - Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa: Descriptive of the Zoolus, Their Manners, and Customs, Vol. 1 (1836, p. 10)

"Scary Sh*t."

In the seminar course I'm teaching this semester, we'll be attending a movie theater showing of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016) next week. This in mind, my goal has been to prepare my students for a critical examination of the film by studying concurrent 19th century discourse. Jane Austen's novel was originally published in 1813, the same time in which European colonial expansion was underway, slavery in the U.S. (and Americas) was reaching its zenith, and modern linguistics and anthropology were also taking shape. Other texts from this historical period include Nathaniel Isaacs' Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa, Vol. 1 (1836), famous for its (now debunked) descriptions of King Shaka Zulu, as well as Solomon Northrup's (1853) autobiographical account (now feature film) Twelve Years a Slave, and Charles Darwin's Descent of Man ​(1871).

As I critically examine key examples of thought and discourse from this period together with my students, we are additionally drawing crucial connections to the rise of the 
zombie in U.S. American popular culture. This week, we examined excerpts from each of Isaacs' and Darwin's popular pieces. This was for my ongoing Spring 2016 course, Languages of Fear, Racism, and Zombies. In class, I guided students in using critical discourse analysis to examine these important texts.

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The Bronx Spoke and I Talked Back

2/9/2016

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By Jamie A. Thomas
Picture

Closing Social Distance on the Street

When I stepped onto the street, all around me I heard sounds. Car horns, cell phone conversations. Clothing outlets and grocery stores lined the avenue, some with doors ajar, and folks were selling things in the open air, too. Everyone else was making their way home as though at the end of a long work day, their footsteps ladened with backpacks, boxes, and other packages they were carrying onwards. My first time in the Bronx, and it could've been a scene from a vibrant street in one of Mexico City's several colonias. I was awestruck by the lively rhythm of this community. Words in Spanish and Vietnamese renewed old Jewish storefronts, where Stars of David still crest brick and mortar facades.

On my way to the nearest subway station, a colorful man standing on the corner approached me, advertising for a local business over a megaphone. He was doing his energetic best to get me to support a nearby salon. As I kept walking, I responded to let him know he had been heard, but that I wasn't interested. Why not? I told him I wouldn't be around long enough, that I wasn't a New York local. Where you from? Philly, and I was on the move, I said smiling, having used a phrase my mom often returned to.

But an interesting thing happened as I was talking to this guy.

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    Main Author

    Jamie A. Thomas is a linguistic anthropologist and digital media producer. Her forthcoming book Zombies Speak Swahili is all about the undead, videogames, and viral Black language. She teaches at Santa Monica College.

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